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Vogel on professional Tea Party

POLITICO 44

The groups — Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, Leadership Institute and Tea Party Express – raised $79 million last year. That’s a 61 percent increase from their haul in 2009, when the tea party first started gaining traction, and an 88 percent increase over their tally in 2008, according to a POLITICO review of campaign reports and newly released tax filings.

And the two biggest groups — Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks — tell POLITICO they’re planning to raise and spend a whopping $156 million combined this year and next, laying the groundwork for what could be a massive tea party organizing push against Democrats and the occasional moderate Republican in 2012.

It’s an entirely different story for the ragtag local groups that form the heart of the tea party, which struggle to raise cash.

The imbalance is worrisome to some grass-roots tea party activists, who warn that the movement is at risk of becoming dependent on the type of centralized, top-down political structure that contributed to tea partiers’ distaste for both political parties, as well as Washington’s conservative establishment.

“There isn’t an unlimited pool of cash in the conservative movement, and my concern is that some of these big national groups are sucking up money that could otherwise go to the local tea party leaders who are the ones really making things happen on the ground,” said Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, a Washington area nonprofit group that helps local tea party leaders set up groups.

American Majority, which itself has seen its fundraising soar from $1 million when it was established in 2008 to $3.3 million last year, expects that it and its affiliate American Majority Action will have handed out a total of $500,000 in grants to local tea party groups by the end of the year.

Some local tea party organizers privately told POLITICO that national groups have requested their member lists to send fundraising pitches. Others grumbled that the megagroups’ spending seems more geared toward supporting Washington’s political industry than boosting the grass-roots.

POLITICO’s analysis of disclosures filed with the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Election Commission found that the large groups spend big bucks on salaries, like the $500,000 that FreedomWorks paid its chairman, Dick Armey, endorsements from radio hosts like Glenn Beck and Mark Levin, and speaking fees to movement heroes like Sarah Palin and Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, not to mention millions more on consultants and ad buys.

Readers' Comments (842)

Here goes the evil liberal spin machine in full cycle to try to hate on the hard working members of the Tea Party. These activists, old and young alike love their country far more than the hateful racist media and they are not afraid to stand up for what they believe in.

These self-centered egotistical people. They do not give a damn if the firemen don't come as you cannot pay them money for their service.... as a result you will die in a burning house. They are in it for themselves and not for the country.

These self-centered egotistical people. They do not give a damn if the firemen don't come as you cannot pay them money for their service.... as a result you will die in a burning house. They are in it for themselves and not for the country.

There would be no Education Department, National Institute of Health, CDC...and so forth. They live in lala-land... a make belief land. They are so out of touch that a Tea Party leader will never be elected a president.

Funny isn't it, where were they when we invaded two countries - unpaid, while at the same time had tax cuts for millionaires, had prescription part D... even their timing and logic is so questionable. This is a older whiter demographic. So cut education department but not medicare advantage or social security. Leave me alone but no gays in the military and christian prayer lesson at school..

This article doesn't bother me because it's just a hit piece on the Tea Party members. The MSM love to start a fight. We've learned it takes money (no kidding) to defeat the Liberal Dem's. We mean business and that is to defeat every liberal Dem that is currently sitting in Wash. Yes, that includes Obama, Nancy, Chucky, Dick and all their buds. So, Yea we're raising money...ain't it cool?

OBTW - is this pic photoshopped in anyway? Just wondering about the pirate flag with Obama and the cross bones. I don't remember ever seeing that one. Just saying........

Rush said Liberty was on the way out if the Dems and Libs get there way....I say the Tea Party is bringing it home. Sean said FREEDOM will ring from coast to coast and free speech is alive and well with the teabaggers. This country was founded by people that didn't want to pay taxes and that is what I am for....a tax free America with no government services or handouts.

They claimed they wanted jobs and joined up with the 3rd BIGGEST JOBS OUTSOURCER IN AMERICA !!!! Koch Industries.

I just hope you understand that when you pound the table threatening business people with higher taxes, higher energy costs, higher healthcare costs and continue with free trade at the same time outsourcing will continue. Is this a hard concept to comprehend?

If you'd like business to create jobs here you have to make it lucrative for them, there's no other way except perhaps locking the country up which is obviously NOT on the table right now.

In this mercenary day and age we are bound to see a number of PAC parasites call themselves tea partiers in order to get rich off obscene PAC salaries. (Notice the tea party PAC in full donor disclosure mode raises but a small fraction of the money the undisclosed-donor PACs raise; corporate donors like to be anonymous.) These rich "leaders" take their marching orders from Korporate Amerika. Their orders are to rile and rally the "rabble," to pepper the "peons" with pro-corporate propaganda and call it "individual freedom." They feed the local tea party corporate shills peanuts; if I raised well over ten million dollars and gave local tea party groups in America only $500,000 and paid the corporate leader the same amount (Armey), I sure wouldn't be bragging about it, but they do, thinking they are being "generous."

Why isn't the tea party queen Palin into the presidential race with both feet and leading tea party America? Because she's a tea party welfare queen who prefers bilking the suckers out of their money and feathering her private nest by making a series of canned tea party speeches each year. The tea party movement is an insider game headed by an old Republican D.C. insider Dick Armey, who pushes the corporate agenda: destroy the EPA (so our companies can pollute your air, water and land and save a fortune in environmental protection costs); preach individual responsibility and rail against government programs that enable the lazy (while we jet into D.C. and demand bailouts and billion-dollar subsidies); hate the union workers that make a little better living (so you won't be noticing or hating that we corporate kings are individually pocketing multi-millions and slashing your jobs and benefits or sending your jobs overseas).

Tea party Republicans in D.C. have tried to shut down our government and tried to drive US into default (nearly succeeding). Send more such Republicans to Congress and the puppeteers may get what they want, a Korporate Amerika where corporations make all the rules and run roughshod over our government and the rest of US.

These tea partiers are raising two or three million dollars here and a couple of million there. Taken altogther they may raise as much as $100 million! Something must be done!

But how does this compare with the $1 BILLION that Obama is planning on raising just for his campaign alone. Or the hundreds of millions of hard-earned dollars extracted from taxpayers by the public sector unions that are going into Democratic party coffers for the next election.

Isn't this a little like comparing some guy in the 1920's mixing up a batch of bathtub gin with the Al Capone operation?

But I understand your point. Anybody raising any amount of money to oppose the socialist regime in Washington is seen by the socialst mainstream media as a dangerous threat that must be dealth with through the politics of personal destruction.